I actually picked this up off of Swapadvd.com because I saw the preview for it before some other horror movie. I think it was Midnight Meat Train. As soon as I saw Brian Yunza’s name, I was sure the film was going to be entertaining. After all he helped five us Re-Animator, Dagon, Warlock, and From Beyond. Of course he’s also given us The Dentist, Necronomicon, and the fourth and fifth installments of Silent Night, Deadly Night (Although you need to see the first two. Seriously! They’re hilarious. “IT’S GARBAGE DAY!”). But hey, I had about 20+ credits still left on the site and they had a single copy, so I took the plunge BENEATH STILL WATERS. See how I did that?

Sadly, I wish I’d stayed far away from this film as the premise was actually really good, but the execution? Not so much.

The plot revolves around two towns and a dam. One town is a happy little Spanish village. The other is filled with satanic sex crazed cannibals. The happy town, in order to keep from being killed and eaten, blows up their dam with the intent of flooding and drowning the other town. Before they succeed though, two stupid little boys, unware of their neighbors being the Castillian Soddom and Gommorah accidentally slightly free the high priest of evil in the second town, allowing his spirit to become some all powerful ghostly demon thing (that still looks human) and vow revenge on the do-gooders…who just commited genocide, so really, are they do-gooders?

Flash forward to forty years later where the ghost-demon Satanist returns (Also, I should point out he looks eerily like the tall man from Phantasm which was cool). As the demon grows in power, people get possesed, the dead beneath the lake rise to eat the living in strange and gorey forms, lots of people die, lots more become corrupted and engage in rape, sodomy, orgies and acts of psychotic behavior. The eventual goal of the evil one is to turn the townsfolk into the same corrupt villagers that were drowned four decades ago, and then to burst the damn, killing them all. With the help of a young girl, who is the grandaughter of the mayor who ordered the damn to be broken, one of the young boys who set the evil dude free (now all grown up and craaaaaazy) and a few others, they attempt to defeat the evil and burn what appears to be the Necronomicon which will dispel the spirit. In the end, the good guys win, but just not really, as it wouldn’t be a horror movie without a swerve. The evil guy possesses a slightly retarded boy and uses some newfound psychic powers to explode athe damn anyway. Cut to the dam and the sound of people screaming. The end.

Like I said, the premise wasn’t bad, but the awful acting job and the stupid ending killed the film for me. The was also just random monsters and sex for the sake of having both, although neither contributed to the plot. But then, that’s a Yunza film for you.

Lots of potential, but the execution fell short of all that this movie could have been.

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